


Ruses

by Tromper



Series: Roles and Reputations [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Additional tags will come with additional chapters, Alternate Universe, Angst, Backstory, Cold (Weather), Gen, Heist, Lords of Misrule, Minor Original Character(s), Not sure what else to tag this with ATM, Nott and Caleb are aligned with Empire, Others are with Xhorhas, Reputations AU, Sexual References, spy vs spy - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 21:35:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18416306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tromper/pseuds/Tromper
Summary: A collection of short stories fleshing out the background of "Reputations". Can be read independently.Featuring the first interaction between Dwendalian secret agent Nott and the Lords of Misrule (led by Captain Jester Fancypants).





	Ruses

Beau waited, dangling by her fingertips from the sill. Jester was taking her sweet time clearing the room and her arms were beginning to ache. She took another deep breath and focused on the stone in front of her nose. A little meditation to get through the pain and the cold couldn’t really be considered giving in to their agenda. Finally, Jester laughed loudly and tapped twice on the window. An internal door opened and closed cutting off the conversation as the occupants left the room. Focusing on her limbs, her muscles and sinew, how she fit together, Beau gathered herself. Curling to bring her feet up to a tiny space where the stonework joined, she felt her fingers begin to slip even as her toes found purchase and sweat began to bead on her spine. Gritting her teeth, she launched herself upwards.

The room on the other side of the glass was lit by faintly glowing stones imprisoned in sconces on the walls. Their dulled light cast shadows across the bookshelves around them, granting only the occasional glitter to the golden edges of titles. Beau found herself sneering a little at the gaudy bindings and stopped. She wasn’t going to be the sort of person to judge other people by their fucking book bindings and referencing systems. She wasn’t. A fire burned in the grate, casting dancing light into the glassy eyes of a bearskin rug on the floor. Her target, the Archmage’s desk with its haphazard load of papers, crouched only three steps in from the window, tantalizingly close. 

Careful to keep her balance on the thin ledge, Beau reached into her coat and pulled out the potion. It was a tiny vial, silvery and weightless. The contents barely constituted a mouthful and tingled on the way down. The world faded. Disturbing Things began to shift in the distance, swimming through the grey Other space. As soon as she felt the ledge vanish from beneath her feet she took the three steps to the desk and began to read. Focusing on what exposed text she could see in the jumble helped. Out of the corner of her eye she could see one of the Things beginning to swim closer. She spotted a dodecahedron on a slip of paper half-covered in one of the haphazard piles. Anxious and impatient she reached for it and swore quietly as her hand passed through it. The potion wasn’t supposed to last long, and the Thing was getting closer. 

Just as she was coming to the uncomfortable realization that the Thing was a lot bigger than she’d initially thought, the world snapped back into colour. She grabbed the stack with the dodecahedron first, sweeping it swiftly into her bag, then turned her attention to the desk drawers. They weren’t locked. The false bottom in one of the draws had a latch trap, so she punched her way directly through the thin wood to grab the contents. She was off target just enough that the trap sprung as she was pulling her hand out. Her knuckles blistered instantly as the desk caught fire with a deceptively soft whumpf. She swore under her breath again and began trying to salvage what was left of the notes as the room filled with smoke. Moments later she caught the distant sound of a bell ringing frantically. Weighing her options in an instant, she turned and threw herself out through the window. 

It was a long fall. 

Time enough to consider her poor-decision making, at least, as the snow-covered street barrelled towards her and all around her the window glass tumbled down.

She hit the ground and rolled to distribute her momentum just enough to avoid breaking anything outright. The glass, not so easily gentled, dug into her in a hundred places, but she could still run. And so, she ran. 

\-----------------------

The fresh snow showed her blood darkly in the cold moonlight. It was falling just fast enough to cover the day’s slush of footprints and hoofmarks, but not enough to hide her trail before pursuit would find it. Huddled in an alley not nearly far enough from their target, Beau tried desperately to bandage the worst of the wounds that remained after chugging the healing potion. Just enough to keep the blood out of the way. Any more healing potions and the glass would be an absolute nightmare to dig out. 

“Well, shit,” breathed a familiar voice from the other end of the alley. “You just had to break the window.”

Fjord shook his head as he hurried over to help bandage her. 

“Are they following?”

“Hell yeah, they are, Beau. I just delayed them a little,” Fjord held up his and gave a wiggle of his fingers. “Won’t be long ‘til they notice that it ain’t leaving tracks though. We have to move.”

“No kidding,” she said, getting to her feet even as Fjord hastily tied the last bandage. “Feel like some parkour?”

Even in the crappy light she could see the resigned look on Fjord’s face.

“Gotta get our feet out of the streets,” she said, and took a run up at the stack of crates next to the wall. 

\-----------------

Even injured, she had to be careful not to lose Fjord across the rooftops. It was gratifying. The sick pain of her fresh wounds and the stinging of the embedded glass was not, though. The meeting place that had seemed so close when they’d been planning took a frustrating amount of time to reach. 

They were still a minute away when serious alarms began to ring out. Beau grinned to herself. It wouldn’t take long before all the extra people muddied their trail beyond all hope. They were winning.

Taking a sudden turn, she half-fell, half-climbed down into another alley, turning to catch Fjord before he face-planted behind her. She gave him the look he deserved and turned to dart across the avenue and down the smaller lanes of the slums to the back of the Broken Barrel. 

Even with the ground frozen the back alley managed to reek of piss, shit, and vomit. Molly, standing in shadows, pretended to lean nonchalantly against the wall, but Beau was willing to bet he wasn’t actually touching the suspiciously grubby cladding. His eyes glowed faintly, and Beau fought down the urge to make a crappy red-light district joke. They couldn’t afford to get distracted.

“Did Jester make it?” she asked instead.

He nodded.

“Got here a minute or so before you two. She’s gone off to find Yasha.”

Beau couldn’t see his face clearly, but she could hear the worry in his voice. She felt it, too. They couldn’t afford delays, and they couldn’t afford to lose Yasha. 

“Fuck.”

“Exactly.”

“Does she even know where to start?” asked Fjord.

Molly nodded.

“Apparently, the Traveller is going to help - she got a fix on Yasha’s sword. We’re to give them ten minutes before we move to the next step. So long as it stays quiet, that is.”

Pulling her hood up, Beau crouched down to wait.

Which was both boring and nerve wracking at the same time. More than once guards passed their alley, hurrying down the main drag towards the sounds of the search. They arranged themselves so that any guards glancing down their way would see a drunk taking a shit whilst some guy got a blowjob. Molly insisted on making the appropriate noises. 

After what felt like a million years, two familiar looking figures skidded around the corner.

“Go, go, go, go!” Jester yelled as she raced between them down the alley, Yasha on her heels.

Beau was up before Jester had even passed her, while Molly dragged Fjord to his feet by the hair on the other side. She’d only taken two steps after Yasha when she felt a tug on her pack and chill of it lifting away. She turned even as Molly called a warning, glimpsing a small figure with a white face and big yellow glowing eyes before a flare of dark green energy slammed into her. When she’d caught her breath again the figure, and her pack with its precious cargo of stolen research, were gone.

“What the fuck, Fjord!”

“Sorry! It was right there! Shit!” 

Molly slapped his hand across the panicking Fjord’s mouth and began to drag him down the alleyway. 

“The pack…” began Beau, just as Yasha grabbed her arm and dragged her after Jester. Behind them the first of the guards rounded the corner and began to blow their whistles.

\--------------------------------

Nott settled down beside a warm chimney and took a swig from her flask. While these ‘Lords of Misrule’ were a bold and daring bunch, they were out of their depth and sinking fast this deep into the empire. They’d arrived in town only a day before Nott, and she’d still had no trouble finding out where they’d taken up residence. Their plan had been risky, and easy to overhear. All it’d taken to foil their exit had been a nice little (open) letter addressed to the Starosta from a (purported) nice little old lady about the nasty criminal element smuggling through the damaged sewer exit. The letter’s insinuation, that inactivity on this front was due to the Starosta taking bribes, threatened his support structures in the local trade guilds and so guards had been posted to the sewer exit within hours of the letter being posted to the boards. As far as Nott could tell, Misrule had failed to notice the small splash she’d made in the local political scene. They were running headlong into a trap. 

She picked at her claws and took another swig of the shoddy excuse for sherry. The ‘notes of apple and nutty complexity’ she’d been promised were a miserable lie. It did steady her nerves though. She felt like she’d spent the last year living on those very nerves. The dreaded frets gnawed at her bones, and all she had was the alcohol to ease them. By all measures she was out of her depth, too, and she had a healthy terror of any kind of drowning. Caleb was nice enough, but she was a goblin. Unless she succeeded at this ‘counter-intelligence’ thing, his excuses to keep her around, and with all her body parts intact, were bound to fall short. 

The good thing about this Misrule group was that they were really, really bad at going unnoticed. Even a former halfling housewife could keep tabs on them. 

_And if they get caught, actual spies will be sent, an’ they'll be hangin’ Nott the Brave in the mornin’_. Nott shuddered and took another swig, trying to avoid thinking too hard about the old marching tune. She didn’t have the hope of a candle in a hail storm if she was sent to foil real spies. 

She’d need to figure out some way of keeping Misrule alive and active before sunrise when the officials really began paying attention. Preferably something that wouldn’t result in her being hanged as a traitor.

_For they’re hangin’ Nott the Brave, you can hear the Dead March play,  
The Regiment’s in ’ollow square—they’re hangin’ her to-day… _

Trying to avoid the tune now stuck in her head, Nott turned her attention to the bag she’d managed to snatch from ‘Tracy’. A quick rummage revealed it was some sort of Bag of Holding. Not something that could be quickly inspected. Sighing, Nott deftly made her way back to her rented attic. 

Even with the pleasant alcoholic glow fuzzing around her, she was more than capable of climbing in through the small window without being noticed by the bustling search parties in the street below. Once inside, she lost no time turning the bag inside out. A veritable avalanche of stuff poured out. The stolen papers were swiftly followed by a bunch of weapons and shields, jewels, loose gold coins, lots more clinking bags of what were almost certainly coins, clothes, blankets, furs, bedrolls, a tent, and plenty of other small items Nott missed in the realization that she’d also managed to steal Misrule’s winter survival gear. 

Unless they had more contingencies than they’d seemed likely to have, she no longer had until sunrise. If the guards at the sewer exit messed up… whatever Xhorhas was like, over this side of the mountains people didn’t survive winter nights in clothes soaked with blood. 

As quickly as she could manage given her small size, Nott began stuffing the essentials back into the pack. She’d have to go after them.

\-----------------------------

The drop down into the sewer system was like entering a warm bathhouse after the biting cold of the streets. A slimy and stinking bathhouse anyway. The sewers were spelled to remain above freezing to keep the shit flowing all winter, which made them ideal for all kinds of ne’er-do-wells. And for their escape plan. No scent hound could follow them through the layer of warm reeking effluent that seemed to coat every surface. 

It was times like these that Fjord missed his life on the seas. Ships were cramped, and the work could be mind numbing, but at least everything was kept clean. No pipes full of shit for people to climb through under the poop deck. He could feel the slime on the wall smearing across the back of his armour as he edged along the narrow walkway above the deeper ‘waters’.

As they made their way too slowly through the miserable tunnels, Fjord winced at every scrape of Yasha’s sword across the stone, every faint tinkle of Molly’s jewellery, and every less than faint footfall. Without dogs the guards would be relying even more heavily on their ears and if their pursuit was still live, the sewers were probably the worst place to get caught. 

After a good quarter hour or so of sidling through slime, Molly held up his hand and grabbed Beau’s shoulder to signal a stop. As they froze, Fjord caught the faint sound of movement: creaking leather and sloshing. The sounds were still distant - echoing along the tunnels a fair way if Fjord was right in his guess – but suggested a pursuit was underway.

A faint mutter came from up the line and the shadows around them deepened. Fjord sighed in relief and the spell swallowed the slight noise. They’d planned to save Jester’s Pass without Trace for the snows outside, but she seemingly agreed they couldn’t afford to be caught in the narrow tunnels. They started moving again, extra careful even with the spell, and Fjord awkwardly swapped places with Molly so that the tiefling, with his better ears, could take the rear guard. 

The rest of the sewer journey was doubly tense and, as they got close to the exit, the pursuers began calling out to one another, their voices loud but garbled by echoes. Fjord’s heartrate jumped in primal fear, and he had to freeze for a second to beat down the urge to bolt. As he gathered himself, Molly squeezed his shoulder in silent support. It helped, and Fjord internally forgave his friend for the gratuitous noises he’d made earlier in the alleyway. 

The faint and welcome moonlight at the damaged exit grate was a relief short-lived. Fjord saw everyone up ahead freeze and crouch lower, away from the light. Jester beckoned him up to join her.

As he slunk forward, he caught a faint noise from beyond the grate and figured that’s what’d stopped them. He raised a brow at Jester. She cocked her head as if listening and he tapped his ear to remind her that his hearing could be iffy even as he caught the sounds of a quiet conversation. Someone complaining about the cold. Jester held up four fingers, then made a crown with her fingers. He gestured that Crown of Madness required sight and vocal components. She frowned, then gestured for him to follow. Together they crept forwards, Jester notifying the team of their plan with her tail. He’d do the crown, and they’d bolt in the ensuing chaos. Dirty, desperate, but hopefully, effective. 

As soon as he caught sight of one of the people, a Crownsguard, he stopped moving. Focusing on the figure he reached down, mentally, into the feeling of deep cold waters that haunted him, drawing forth the power, feeling it direct his fingers and urge his tongue into shaping the words to seal his will, and directed the magic out to wrap around his victim. It took, and a jagged crown formed over their head. He scrambled forward to spot a target for them even as their companions noticed the charm. As they began to cry out in alarm, he commanded his victim to strike the young man next to them. Their spear struck out, and Fjord squeezed out of the tunnel as quickly as he could. He only stopped long enough to ensure Jester didn’t faceplant the three-foot drop to the ground before bolting towards the distant treeline.

He only got part of the way before remembering spells had limitations on the distances they’d work at. He skidded to a halt, and Jester nearly bowled into him, dodging to the side just in time. His spell was holding, and the guard was still trying to strike out at his companions even as two held him down. The fourth… the fourth had gotten in the way of Beau and Yasha. He was stumbling back clutching his face even as they bolted by. 

As soon as Molly reached him, Fjord dropped the spell and just ran. 

They grouped back up in the trees and set out at a medium pace silent jog under the influence of Jester’s Pass without Trace. It was gruelling, but the running kept the cold off and, hopefully, the spell would keep the hounds and their handlers at bay. 

Unfortunately, after nearly two hours, Jester ran out of juice to cast Pass without Trace just one rise short of the river. Fjord tried not to worry about their tracks onto the frozen stretch being found. It wasn’t quite so important as the fact that Beau was seriously beginning to run out of steam. Even Fjord could hear her teeth clattering as they made their way along the ice. 

“Maybe we should rest a little?” he called forward as loudly as he dared. “Beau might need to get something warmer on.”

Everyone slowed to a stop and Beau turned to him with a scowl.

“There. Isn’t. Anything. Warmer,” Beau bit out through her clattering teeth. 

Fjord blinked. Then he felt like an idiot as it dawned on him.

“The bag…”

“Yeah. The bag.”

“Wait,” said Jester, interrupting Fjord’s horrified realization. “What happened to the bag?”

“It got snatched just as you and Yasha came running through with all the guards after you,” Molly explained, looking worried as Beau hunched herself over more and shivered looking for all the world like a murderous owl.

“Why didn’t you say something earlier!” Jester half-yelled in frustration, before closing her eyes and pinching her nose, taking deep breaths.

“Earlier, maybe you didn’t notice, but earlier we were running for our lives! Then trying to stay quiet and running for our fucking lives!” Molly snapped back with a pinched expression on his face.

For a good minute there was silence as Beau glared and shivered, and Jester looked at the ground with a frown. Eventually Jester looked up, quite obviously worried, which was quite obviously bad. Fjord looked across at Molly, and saw he shared her look. Very bad.

“I’m sorry, guys. It’s just that we really needed that cold weather gear,” said Jester in a small voice, looking cross-ways at Beau. “We’re two hours out from town – two hours of running – and I’m not sure you can make it back. I’m nearly out of spells…”

“Well. Fuck,” said Beau.

“To be fair, I knew the bag was snatched,” Fjord admitted guiltily. “Just, in the rush and the sneaking… and then I just sort of figured you knew.”

He shrugged a little and looked at the ground, and thoroughly regretted his thoughtlessness. Molly patted him on the shoulder.

“Does anyone know how to build a fire and a shelter up here?” Molly asked when no one else had anything to add.

Yasha raised her hand.

“I, um, I know a little about it. I get by,” she said.

“Well, we can certainly try!” announced Jester with renewed enthusiasm. “Just a little further on the river first. And everyone, keep a look out for a good spot as we go.”

Fjord couldn’t help but smile. Nothing kept Jester down for long.

\-------------------------

Wrangling Barkley set Nott back, but she wasn’t really going to get anywhere without him. The snows between the trees at this time of the year were deep enough to swallow someone as small as she was. Barkley, however, made it very clear that he didn’t like the sewers whatsoever. They ended up having to loop through the gates with some well applied illusions, wasting one of the precious scrolls Caleb had entrusted her with.

A scene of chaos greeted them once they’d padded their way around to the sewer discharge pipe. A small swarm of about twenty Crownsguard milled about with torches. They seemed to be a bit on edge, and Nott didn’t much feel like risking anyone spotting her illusion, so she waited and watched from the shadows.

It became evident pretty quickly that the Crownsguard had managed to lose the Lords of Misrule. Nott suppressed the urge to growl to herself over their incompetence and took another swig from her flask. She’d come out here on the off chance the Starosta had failed to assign enough men; it just meant that her panic trip, and use of the scroll, wasn’t in vain. Much of the Crownsguard activity seemed to be directed towards the woods, with guards trailing back and forth into the treeline probably conveying messages to and from search parties. Nott was guessing the main force would only head out along a positive trail, and it didn’t look like they were finding one. 

With no trail in clear snows, there wasn’t much doubt that Misrule had used magic to cover their tracks. Nott didn’t have magic of her own suited to track them with. She picked at her talons while she thought, eventually pulling out her scrappy map of the area to double check her suspicions. 

Worst case scenario, if she picked the wrong direction, enemies of the Empire would die of exposure. 

Skirting the Crownsguard, Nott and Barkley headed towards the river.

\---------------------

Ten minutes or so after they’d decided to tough out the cold, Beau was having trouble thinking straight. Every five steps she made a point to wiggle her fingers and toes, but she was having trouble keeping track of how many five steps were. It was a relief when Molly held up his hand to stop the party.

“I think there’s less snow on the ground up that way,” he said. “That should mean our tracks will cover up quickly, I think?”

Beau was too cold to think of anything to say. The idea of stopping seemed to take up her whole brain.

“Good spotting, Molly!” Jester said cheerily. “We’ll go up there, build a fire and a little house, and get warm.”

Beau just shivered as everyone agreed and worked to get her frozen and aching limbs to move. She just wanted to stop. Tears pricked at her eyes and she held back a sob as she put one foot in front of the other over towards the bank. After a minute or so she heard the others start to follow, and Jester skipped forward to take the lead. As she went past she gave Beau a quick side hug that was blessedly warm, and a smile that said everything would be okay. It felt like how some holy books described the touch of a goddess: divine yet all too brief. 

As she plodded her way onto the stony shore dutifully following Jester’s tail like an idiot pilgrim, the crunch of her feet on the snow and frozen gravel was echoed by an unearthly pinging sound. Her friends began to call out behind her, but it took her another two steps before she realized the sound wasn’t coming from her feet. When she turned to look, Molly, Fjord and Yasha were running to get off the ice. As Molly leapt to the shore, Yasha fell through.

Nothing was working right in Beau’s head, and for a moment the entire scenario seemed impossible. The things everyone was saying didn’t make sense, and Jester’s hand appeared suddenly on her arm holding her back as Fjord launched himself into the frozen river to drag Yasha out. 

“Waz ‘appening?” she managed to slur, and Jester spun her around too quickly.

Beau swallowed down a whimper as the glass she could still feel dug in. Jester began pulling at her eyelids and looking worried. 

“Okay, okay, okay, okay,” Jester said, as Fjord and Yasha lurched past them with Molly dancing round them like a worried moth at a candle. “I think you’re too cold, Beau.”

Beau began to giggle, and Jester looked more worried. Somehow Jester’s worry didn’t really seem important. She did want to follow mothman Molly, though, so she began to plod after him and Jester let her.

\------------------------

The ice of the river was clean compared to the forest floor with only a light dusting of snow. As soon as Barkley stepped out onto it, the reason for the bare ice became clear. The wind blew steadily down along the surface of the ice, funnelled by the trees, cutting across Nott’s exposed face. Barkley whined a little, but she urged him on. Without tracks she had to guess they’d head downriver, and she tried not to worry about going the wrong way. She tried not to worry about ‘Tracy’ lying face down in a snowdrift freezing to sleep. Nott tugged her scarf higher and her hood closer, and scanned the banks for signs of the Xhorhasians. 

She was beginning to doubt her choice of downriver when Barkley caught a scent. She confirmed it by shoving the bag under his nose, and he was off racing along the frozen river. Really, he was just a big doofus underneath all the snarls and posturing. It was kind of fun clinging to his back riding down a frozen river in the darkness. A kind of fun she’d never have dreamt of as Veth.

She was pulled from her musings by a crackling twang and Barkley’s fearful leap to the side. A leap followed by more twanging, and Barkley twisting to dash towards the steep bank. Briefly, she considered trying to rein him in, but that thought vanished when his hindquarters buckled and she heard the distinctive splosh of his paw hitting water. She clung to his fur, buried her face in his shoulder, and prayed to anyone who’d listen. 

Thankfully Barkley, like herself, seemed to have a healthy fear of water. He threw himself at the near vertical cliff of the bankside and scaled it in a series of scrambling lunges with Nott clinging to his back for dear life. Only when he collapsed, panting, onto the ground at the top did Nott dare to look up again. When she carefully climbed down he whined, and she held out her hands for him to lick. 

“You’re such a good boy,” she told him. “Such a good boy! And you need a treat. Yes, you do.”

She used one hand to scratch his ears and the other to reach into her pouch for a sheep heart which he wasted no time in gobbling down. With Barkley reassured, she carefully peeked over the edge of the bank. Her mount’s panicked run formed a clear line of cracks and breaks across the ice, and not much further along was another set of cracks. The other set included a clear break and line to the bank. Nott felt her adrenaline spike. 

If those were from her fools, they were in grave danger. 

\---------------------------

Things were bad. Jester had her arms wrapped around Beau who seemed to be shutting down while Molly swore over the fire he was trying to light. Crouched next to a large snowdrift, he fumbled with Yasha’s buckles on one side while she attempted to work at the other with equally frozen fingers. He could feel himself shutting down as he tried to figure out which way the leather strap fed through the buckle. 

There was a whoop and a short laugh from Molly, and Yasha lurched forward, pulling the strap from Fjord’s numb fingers. He looked around dumbly for a moment before realizing the fire was lit and stumbling forward, too. Molly told them off for crowding round and jabbed at him to get Yasha’s armour off, and so Fjord returned to his fumbling. He felt like a zombie. 

He blinked in surprise when purple hands nudged his away and quickly undid the strap. It was like watching a sleight of hand trick as a child: indistinguishable from magic. The warmth of the fire beckoned and, after watching the trick one more time, he turned and held his hands out to the small crackling campfire.

“Can you watch them while I get more wood?” Molly asked, causing Fjord to jump a little in surprise.

_Survive_.

“Yes, but we need to be careful,” said Jes.

She was always pretty in the firelight. 

“We need to be warm.”

Fjord watched Molly leave through the trees and tried to get his brain to work again. Jester grabbed his hand and pulled it back from the fire. 

“You’ll burn yourself getting too close,” she admonished

“Surry, Jes,” he managed to mumble.

She made an annoyed noise and pushed him over to Yasha.

“You two need to cuddle up. Big spoon and little spoon,” she told them, and they obediently huddled together. 

She threw two of her thin summer blankets over them both and Fjord tried to keep his hands off the fire as he shivered. Jester returned to Beau, who really looked like a zombie. She was wobbling more than shivering and barely acknowledged Jester draping herself over her. Jester began to carefully try to pull pieces of glass out of the monk while at the same time keeping as much of herself in contact with Beau as possible.

_She’s dying_ , he realized. _And you’re dying, too_.

Rather than watch his best friend die, he looked back over into the forest where Molly had disappeared. He had no idea how long he’d been staring when a large shadow moved. Four glowing eyes peered out from the shadows, shimmering slightly in the firelight. Whatever it was, it was monstrous. It moved forward, and Fjord couldn’t think enough to care. 

_Survive!_

Jester moved to put herself between them and the thing. She said something, something about not eating them, and the beast threw something at her. He didn’t understand any of it, and moments later the beast was gone, and Jester was back with Beau.

And Jester was pulling a heavy, fur-lined cloak out of a bag and wrapping it round her.

And then Jester was doing the same for him and Yasha, and helping them drink vials of a warm bitter-sweet concoction. 

_We’re not going to die_ , he thought as the warmth flooded through him. _We’re going to survive_.

\---------------------

Nott took her time leaving, smoothing the snow at the bank of the river to cover Misrule’s tracks. She doubted the Crownsguard would have any scent hounds willing to follow the trail of a dire wolf, but, to be sure, she set a couple of alchemist’s fire traps into the ice where it was rapidly refreezing. The Lords of Misrule were in no condition to have company.

With her tidying done, she dithered a little, unable to decide whether to go back and double check her Xhorhasians had everything they needed, or to head back to town and avoid getting in any deeper. It took her longer to decide than it should have, but she eventually turned Barkley to make a long looping trip back. 

She had a lot of notes to surreptitiously copy for Caleb, and in short order. They couldn’t afford to raise Archmage DeRogna’s suspicions.

**Author's Note:**

> Nott's song is a name change of Kipling's "Danny Deever" poem/song.


End file.
